***Out In the Be-Bop 1930s Swing Night- The Film  Swing Kids -A Sketch

  
With Swing Kids, starring Christian Bales, 1993 in mind  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

... a new breeze came stirring through the land touching the young first as if such things were embedded in some secret teen coda, some teen coda at least since teen became a separate object of study, more likely befuddlement. To stretch those legs, to flash those legs, to sway those hips. To in a word flash the new moves, the new swing moves, learned from the Saturday afternoon matinee movies or from some visiting cousin from New York hip to the latest scene. Not, I repeat, not the ones learned at sixth grade Miss Prissy’s Saturday dance classes, those proper foxtrots and waltzes like you were going to be invited to some cotillion, but the ones that every mother, every girl mother warned her Susie against, to a new sound coming out of the mist, coming to take the sting out of the want years nights, and the brewing nights of the long knives too. And maybe take Janie out into some dark starry night but we will leave that to your imagination and Janie’s mother’s sweats. Coming out of New York, always New York then, Minton’s, Jimmy’s, some other uptown clubs; Chicago, Chicago of the big horns and that stream, that black stream heading north, following the northern star, again, for jobs and to get the hell away from one Mister James Crow; from Detroit, with blessed Detroit Slim and automobile sounds; and Kansas City, the Missouri K.C. okay, the Bird land hatchery, the Prez’s big sexy sax blow home. Jesus, no wonder that madman Hitler banned it, banned, what did he call it, oh yeah, degenerate music, banned it along with dreams. Heil swing!

The sound of blessed swing, all big horns, big reeds, big, well big band, replacing the dour Brother, Can You Spare a Dime and its brethren , no, banishing such thoughts, casting them out with soup lines (and that awful Friday Saint Vincent DePaul fish stew that even Jesus would have turned down in favor of bread, wine and a listen to Benny’s Buddha Swings) casting that kind of hunger out for a moment, a magical realistic moment, casting out ill-fitting, out of fashion, threadbare (nice, huh) second-hand clothes (passed down from out- the- door  hobo brothers and sisters tramping this good green earth looking for their place, or at least a job of work and money in their newer threadbare [still nice] clothes), and casting aside from hunger looks, that gaunt look of those who have their wanting habits on and no way to do a thing about it.  Banished, except maybe for that tired weary urban pile refuge scrounger just then thinking that for the sake of the three boys he might just have to kneel down and grab some churchman’s letter, yeah things were still that tough. Banished with that exception because after all was said and done it did not mean a thing, could not possibly place you anywhere else but in squareville (my term, not theirs), if you did not have that swing. To be as one with jitter-buggery if there was (is) such a word (together, not buggery by itself, not in those days, not in the public vocabulary anyway). And swing as it lost steam with all the boys, all the swing boys, all oversea boys and the home- fire girls tired of dancing two girl dancing, a fade echo of the cool age be-bop that was a-borning, making everybody reach for that high white note floating out of Minton’s, Big Bill’s, Jimmie’s, hell, even Olde Saco’s Starlight Ballroom before it breezed out in the ocean air night, crashed into the tepid sea. Yeah, but before that swing, brother, swing.